Trade unions representing mineworkers caught in the crossfire of Ukraine’s ruinous military conflict have appealed for support – and received it – from the National Union of Mineworkers in the UK.

Fighting has intensified in Donetsk this week – a grim reminder of why solidarity matters.

The NUM, which is calling for peaceful resolution of the conflict and for “all interference from outside Ukraine to stop”, welcomed a

Sergei Yunak speaking at the Durham miners gala in July 2014

delegation of local union officials from eastern Ukraine to the Durham miners gala in July last year.

The delegates, from the Dnepropetrovsk branch of the Ukraine Coal Industry Trade Union (PRUP), “asked us to help put their point of view across internationally”, Chris Kitchen, NUM national secretary, said.

“Most of their members are employed by DTEK [an energy company controlled by Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man and the foremost oligarch in Donetsk]. They wanted to know about our experience of dealing with

A Russian dockers’ trade union leader is starting a three-and-a-half year jail sentence – which is the port management’s revenge for workers’ action over pay and conditions, his union says.

Leonid Tikhonov, chair of the Dockers Union of Russia at Vostochny Port in the Russian Far East, was

Leonid Tikhonov

on 15 December found guilty in court of embezzlement. The union says the charges are baseless and its members have testified that nothing was embezzled.

Port management brought the charges, in breach of correct legal procedure, in June 2012 – right after port workers launched a campaign against low pay and casualisation.

Vostochny Port, a giant container terminal near Nakhodka at the end of the Trans Siberian Railway, is on Russia’s increasingly important trade route to the Far East. Workers making their presence felt there will surely have pushed at a weak spot in capital’s armour.

On 15 December 2014, Nakhodka City Court handed down a guilty verdict against Leonid Tikhonov, chair of the Dockers’ Union of Russia (DUR) local branch at Vostochny Port joint stock company in the Russian Far East. The trade union leader was

ALEXEI GASKAROV, the Russian antifascist and political prisoner, wrote this letter to readers of Zhukovskie Vesti, a local newspaper in the town of Zhukovsky where he lives. Gaskarov was a defendant in the Bolotnaya Square case brought against activists and other participants in the big anti-government demonstrations of 2011-12. (See defence committee site here.) He was transferred out of Butyrka remand prison in Moscow at six o’clock in the morning on 28 December 2014. Gaskarov brought in

“To remember is to fight”

the New Year while in transit to a medium security prison where he will serve his three-and-half-year sentence (as yet supporters don’t know which prison). In August, Zamoskvoretsky District Court in Moscow sentenced four defendants in the Bolotnaya Square case – Gaskarov, Alexander Margolin, Ilya Gushchin, and Elena Kohtareva – finding them guilty of involvement in rioting and using violence against authorities. The recent decision of the appellate court was adamant: it upheld the lower court’s verdict. In the letter, Gaskarov summed up this difficult year, spent away from loved ones, and speculated on what is happening in Russia:

Russian political prisoner and anti-fascist activist ALEXEI GASKAROV looks back in this article at 15 years of anti-fascist activity in Russia, and discusses the Kremlin’s role in eastern Ukraine and the future of Russia’s protest movement.

Gaskarov was sentenced on 18 August 2014 by the Zamoskvoretsky District Court in Moscow – together with Ilya Gushchin, Alexander Margolin, and Elena Kokhtareva – in the so-called second wave of

It might be helpful to readers – including anti-fascists in other countries who don’t know Russia well – to put some of Gaskarov’s points in context.

He explains how, in 1998-99, he witnessed skinhead gangs appearing on the streets and fascist ideas gaining popularity. That was a time of economic and political instability: in mid 1998 a banking crash caused a four-fold devaluation of the ruble, and, with social and labour protest mounting, several governments came and went in quick succession as the regime of president Boris Yeltsin shuddered. Vladimir Putin was appointed as prime ministerRead the rest of this entry »